ATTACK ON ROMAN CATHOLICISM

Southland Times, Issue 24598, 21 November 1941, Page 10

ATTACK ON ROMAN CATHOLICISM

ADDRESS AT METHODIST SYNOD

“There are two great menacing forces in the world today,” said the Rev. Leslie B. Neale in his presidential address to the annual synod of the Methodist Church of Otago and Southland in Dunedin on Wednesday. “One is Roman Catholicism, or a revival of sacerdotalism, and tha other the denial of the New Testament religion or arrogant unbelief. Our - greatest need today is a revival of Christian belief, New Testament religion, evangelical preaching and spiritual thought, and a Protestant church and ministry. “There are those who listen with incredulity to the suggestion that Protestantism 1; in any kind of danger,” Mr Neale said, “yet, in spite of the fires of Smithfield, of the battle of the Armada, and of the Renaissance, Romanism is as active as ever. Everywhere our Protestant religion and heritage is being assailed, not simply by frankly confessed Romanists but by bastard Romanists within the church. ROMANISM ATTACKED “We are fighting against a determined and spurious attempt to filch from us our glorious Protestant liberties,” Mr Neale continued. “You find it in the rotten philosophy of Hitlerism and in the ‘Christianity’ of Romanism. The Romanizing movement is neither a scriptural nor a people’s movement. It is a pseudo-human movement. The New Testament teaches the right of free access to the Throne of Grace, confession to God and not to man only, and the right of the believer to come to God without the intervention of prelate or priest. It teaches that marriage is a creative act ordained by the Creator and not to be dictated by Romanism. The Bible teaches that all little children belong to God, and that no water sprinkled by a priest can save a child’s soul. The Pope is only an ordinary sinful man like you and me. He is no more ‘ the head of the Church than you are. That Head is Jesus Christ.” Mr Neale said that the great Scriptural doctrines were in jeopardy today and they must be safeguarded from attack and mis-statement. The world needed a strong, united Protestant Church and an evangelical church . DELIVERANCE FROM SIN Instead of dabbling in pacifism, politics, prophesy and economics, he continued, people today needed an outburst of evangelical teaching and preaching, an emotional, impressive proclamation of what God and Jesus meant to man, of what Divine grace, love, and sacrifice

and Divine condemnation meant to sinful man. The most urgent message this sin-burdened world needed today was not “Aid to Russia,” economic reconstruction, and social justice, but deliverance from the guilt and power of sin in and through Jesus. “If ever man needed the gospel of Jesus, it is today,” Mr Neale added. “This is a world of sin, of juntoism, and of militarism, .and it will remain unchanged unless we preach Jesus and make the grand experiment of religion. The ancient Sign of the Cross still stands in challenge to evil forces.”